Typical computing environments include one or more computing devices, such as desktop computers, laptop computers, hand-held computers, database servers, file servers, web servers, supercomputers, and the like. Each of these devices typically includes one or more processors and storage media for storing data and executable software modules.
The loss of data due to an unforeseen event is of paramount concern to organizations or other computer users. The data may be lost, for example, by fire, flood, and other natural disasters, hardware failure, and even software viruses or other hostile network attacks. To mitigate the risk of loss, due to an unforeseen event, organizations typically make use of an archival and retrieval system to periodically backup the data. These systems may include a number of backup devices including remote storage devices, tape drives, optical jukeboxes and the like.
A backup operation is typically performed by one of a number of different commercially available software programs. The software programs often run on a computer coupled to a network of computers, and tend to consume network bandwidth when saving the data to a backup device. Consequently, these programs tend to require considerable time to backup critical data, and can often consume significant computing and network resources. Furthermore, the software program responsible for the backup and restoration may be subject to viruses or other network attacks, thereby increasing the risk to the organization.